Written: 5 January 1930.
Source: The Militant, Vol. III No. 9, 1 March 1920, p. 4.
Transcription/HTML Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2012. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 .
Up to the very last moment Blumkin carried through work of the utmost importance for the Soviet Union. How could he do this while adhering to the Opposition? This is explainable from the nature of his work, which was of an entirely individual character. Blumkin had little, if anything, to do with the Communist nuclei, and no possibility of participating in Party discussions. But this does not mean that he hid his thoughts. On the contrary, Blumkin had told Menjinsky and Trilisser, the former chiefs of the foreign department of the G.P.U., that his sympathies were with the Opposition, but that naturally, like any other Oppositionist, he was absolutely prepared to carry out his important tasks for the October revolution. Menjinsky and Trilisser considered Blumkin to be irreplaceable, which was true. They left him to his tasks which he always carried out.
Blumkin did visit me at Constantinople. I have already mentioned the fact that Blumkin had slight connections with my secretarial work. In particular, he had prepared one of my military works (I mention this in the preface of that work). Blumkin came to me in Constantinople in order to ascertain my analysis of the situation and in order to assure himself that he ought to remain in the service of the government which was deporting, banishing and imprisoning those comrades who were of the same mind as himself. I replied, naturally, that he was doing his revolutionary duty – not towards the Stalin regime, which had usurped the rights of the Party, but towards the October Revolution.
There has, perhaps, been quoted to you, from one of Yaroslavsky’s articles, an allegation concerning my conversation with a visitor last summer and to whom I had predicted the inevitable and imminent collapse of the Soviet government. The miserable sycophant lies, that goes without saying. But on comparing certain facts and dates, I am certain that this referred to my conversation with Blumkin. As for his question concerning the possibility of reconciling his work and his adherence to the Opposition, I told him among other things, that my exile as well as the imprisonment of other comrades did not change our fundamental line; that in the moment of danger the Oppositionists would be in the most advanced posts, that in the difficult hours Stalin would be forced to call upon them even as Tseretelli appealed to the Bolsheviks for aid against Kornilov. In that connection I added: “if only it is not too late.” Apparently, Blumkin, after his arrest disclosed the nature of his interview in order to show the attitude and state of mind of the Opposition: it must not be forgotten that I had been exiled because of the accusation that I was preparing an armed conflict against the Soviet power!
Through Blumkin I had sent an informative letter to Moscow for our friends, based upon the same ideas that I had set forth in a series of published articles: the Stalin repression against us does not yet signify a change in the class character of the State, but only prepares and makes more easy that change; our course remains, as in the past, that of reform and not that of revolution; the implacable struggle for our ideas must be based on the perspective of a long delay.
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L. TROTSKY |
(Excerpts from letter of January 5th, 1930 at Prinkipo, Turkey)
Last updated on: 1.9.2012